Organizations face an ever-increasing number of distracting and harmful intrusions as their members use and navigate the Internet. Malicious, inappropriate, and/or irrelevant websites may consume precious network bandwidth and resources, serve to propagate malware within an organization, decrease productivity, and/or degrade an organization's work environment.
Traditional Internet-filtering systems may spare an organization from many of these problems by filtering access to unwanted Internet sites that would otherwise be available to an endpoint within the organization. For example, an IT administrator may install and configure filtering software on each client system within an organization in order to prevent members of the organization from accessing unwanted Internet sites. Unfortunately, installing, configuring, and maintaining filtering software on each client system within the organization may prove cumbersome, complex, and expensive. In addition, while some traditional Internet-filtering systems may utilize filtering software installed on a gateway, this solution may grow in expense as the number of client systems within an organization increases. Accordingly, the instant disclosure identifies a need for simple and cost-effective systems and methods for filtering Internet access.